Effingham County offers a variety of programming options for gifted students.  Blandford gifted students are served through a resource model, in which students are grouped with other gifted students one day each week and receive specialized instruction from a gifted endorsed teacher. In addition, many gifted students are also served through cluster grouping and collaboration between the gifted education specialist and the general education teacher.

Gifted education is an integral part of Effingham County’s total educational program.  Gifted students are provided differentiated lessons and challenging educational opportunities, which enhance and extend the Georgia Performance Standards. Students work on higher-level thinking activities using age appropriate materials.  They are provided opportunities for complex, in-depth study designed to build thinking, research, communication, and technology skills. 

In addition, elementary gifted students progress through the Effingham County Gifted Education Curriculum, which provides a continuum of learning experiences to address the sequential and developmental needs of gifted students. Teaching methods include but are not limited to: direct instruction, guided practice, independent assignments, cooperative group activities, learning games, and planned experiences.

 Student achievement is evaluated using appropriate and specific criteria based on high expectations.  Evaluation methods include graded work, teacher observation, and student self-evaluation.                                  

• Students will need to have a 1" binder for GT.  Students should have notebook paper in the binder at all times.  It is important that students bring this binder to GT class each week.  Please do not remove work/papers that are 3-hole punched/clipped into the GT notebook, as we will refer back to them often.  This would be the foreign language work and research/projects that are on-going.
• Students should bring pencils, crayons, glue sticks, colored pencils/markers, and scissors to class.  A pencil box or zippered bag works well for carrying these supplies.  These can be the same supplies that they use in their regular classroom.  As a part of the GT program, students will often work together or collaborate on assignments and/or projects. Being prepared for class by having these materials available is essential.   
• Students will be allowed to bring their own small, nutritious snack to GT.  Cookies, chips, and soft drinks will NOT be allowed.  Fruit, yogurt, cheese, granola bars, pretzels, cheese/peanut butter crackers, Goldfish, and popcorn are examples of acceptable snack items.  Per district policy, only see-through water bottles are allowed.   

The elementary gifted resource program is an academic program.  The curriculum both extends and enriches the standards of the general education curriculum.  Each GT student will receive a numeric grade on his/her regular school report card.  Students who have less than an 80 average at the end of a marking period in GT, or an area in which they are served for GT,  will be placed on probation in accordance with the probation policy.  Parents will have access to student GT grades through the Parent Portal.  Student grades from their regular classroom subjects are monitored by Mrs. McGee. 

A positive grading policy will be utilized in our GT classroom.  This will help motivate students to take seriously the work in the GT program and allow them to be willing to attempt challenging assignments.  GT grades will be a fair reflection of student performance in class.

 Students must maintain at least an average of 80 in all subjects in which they are served through gifted education.  This could be ELA/Reading, Math, Science, Social Studies, and/or GT classes, depending on the areas in which the student has qualified. If a student does not maintain an 80 average in any of these areas, he/she will be put on probation for a marking period.  If the average is not brought up to at least an 80 for the next marking period, the student will no longer be eligible to receive gifted services.      

Class Work-  daily assignments which may include daily problem solving, individual unit assignments, logic reasoning assignments, current event assignments, PETS curriculum, chess reviews, foreign language assignments, etc.   

Projects- Students will have various projects to complete during the year in GT.  They are also required to complete the contracts given each marking period by their regular classroom teachers.  Major projects can count as much as three grades during the nine weeks.  An incomplete project would result in an unsatisfactory grade.

Participation- class discussions, group work, engineering challenges, etc.  Participation will count as a grade; therefore, it is very important that the student contributes to the class discussions, and carries his/her fair share of the load in group work.     Missed GT Class-When a student is absent from GT, he/she will need to check for assignments in the GT Google Classroom and complete them in a timely manner.